Children’s Educational Toys: A review of Leapfrog Tag Reader
In January 2008, Leapfrog had presented a product preview of their upcoming and newest children’s educational toys which are scheduled to be available to the market by Summer of the year. Although not confirmed, it is likely that this new LeapFrog educational toys called Leapfrog Tag Reader is likely to replace the LeapPad Educational System. With more than 30 million LeapPad units sold worldwide, LeapFrog became known as a leader in producing children’s educational toys.
According to LeapFrog’s Executive Vice President of Product, Innovation and Marketing, Nancy MacIntyre, the Tag Reader System is a next generation learning product designed for new generation of young readers. Since it is a LeapFrog’s product, parents can trust that it provides rigorous educational value and years of fun for their children.
Immediately after the preview, New York Times carry the following articles in their 29 January 2008’s publication:
The company’s LeapPad became an instant sensation after it was introduced in 1999 and helped turn the small educational toy maker into one of the fastest-growing toy companies in history. But as the LeapPad aged, LeapFrog’s fortunes sagged.
This week, LeapFrog pulls the wraps off the LeapPad’s successor, the Tag, a thick, white and green plastic stylus that turns paper books into interactive playthings. LeapFrog is betting that the $50 Tag, which will be available this summer along with an 18-volume library that includes children’s classics like “The Little Engine That Could” and “Olivia,” will be the hit it badly needs. It calls the Tag its “biggest launch ever.”
The Tag, officially called the Tag Reading System, works a lot like the LeapPad. Children can tap a word with it and the stylus reads the word, or its definition, aloud. They can tap on an image to hear a character’s voice come alive.
Interactive games test their reading comprehension. At its simplest, the Tag can also act as an audio book and simply read a story from beginning to end.
But while the LeapPad system required spiral-bound books to be placed on a clunky, laptop-sized plastic console with a pointing device attached to it, LeapFrog has put all of the Tag’s smarts into the inch-and-a-half-thick stylus. It works on books whose pages are imprinted with invisible dots that allow a small infrared camera at the tip of the Tag to recognize words or images on the page. That makes it far more portable and easier to use than the LeapPad, says Jeffrey G. Katz, the chief executive of LeapFrog.
“LeapPad was a phenomenon,” said Mr. Katz. “But Tag is a better product.”
The real question that LeapFrog investors are asking, however, is whether Tag will match, or even approximate, the commercial success of the LeapPad. “I’m reluctant to say,” Mr. Katz said. “I think it can be bigger, but I’m not going to forecast that.”
It’s not hard to see why Mr. Katz hesitates. The LeapPad quickly became the industry’s best-selling toy — a first for an educational product.
LeapFrog went on to sell 30 million LeapPads and related products worldwide, as well as more than 70 million companion books. In 2003, the LeapPad family of products brought in $330 million, nearly half of LeapFrog’s revenues.
But the LeapPad’s appeal began fading as it faced growing competition from the likes of Fisher-Price and VTech.
For investors, the LeapFrog story quickly turned from fairy tale to bad dream. While LeapFrog has introduced several other award-winning products, none matched the LeapPad in sales or profitability. LeapPad sales plunged and the company racked up losses that, in the past two years alone, are expected to top $200 million. LeapFrog shares closed Friday at $5.81, almost 90 percent below their October 2003 peak.
Analysts say Mr. Katz, the former chief executive of the online travel booking service Orbitz, who became LeapFrog’s chief executive in the summer of 2006, has helped rein in expenses and resolve long-standing inventory and manufacturing problems. He made modest staff cuts. On Friday, he announced another 85 layoffs amounting to about 10 percent of the company’s workforce.
But the linchpin of Mr. Katz’s turnaround strategy is a string of products that LeapFrog plans to introduce in the next few months. None is more important that the Tag.
“Tag needs to be successful,” said Sean McGowan, an analyst with Needham & Company. “LeapFrog needs this to redefine their leadership in the reading market.”
The Tag will be shown at DEMO, a high-profile technology conference in Palm Desert, Calif.
Mr. McGowan and other analysts who have seen the product are upbeat about its prospects and note that it is priced appropriately and aimed at LeapFrog’s core demographic — 4- to 8-year-old children. But predicting success in the toy business is notoriously difficult. “We’ll see if the market wants it,” Mr. McGowan said.
The Tag has already garnered some fans.
From the response generated since then, it is likely that the LeapFrog Tag Reader will generate just as much success as the predecessor product, LeapPad, as the newest ‘must-have’ tech educational toys.
About LeapFrog’s Children’s Educational Toys
LeapFrog is a familiar name to many parents and childhood educator. They have been designing and developing children’s educational toys for years and had been tremendously creative and successful in coming out with toys that are truly educational and beneficial for children.
LeapFrog was founded in 1995 and is based in Emeryville, California. The educational platform developed by them currently includes more than 100 interactive software titles, which cover important subjects such as phonics, reading, writing, mathematics, music, geography, social studies, spelling, vocabulary and science.
LeapFrog develops educational toys for children’s ages from birth to 16 years. Their award-winning US consumer products are available in six languages in more than 35 countries worldwide.
LeapFrog is committed to develop educational toys that provide the most engaging and effective learning experience for children of all ages both in school and at home. They always put learning on top of other factors in designing their toys. They list three elements that set their products apart from other children’s educational toys producer:
LeapFrog always start with a rigorous, proven learning methodology;
LeapFrog creates compelling, multi-layered content; and
LeapFrog delivers the content and learning experience through the use of technology that is intuitive, invisible and engaging.
LeapFrog Tag Reader’s Product Description
TAG Reading System is an excellent educational toy for children or toddler that is beginning to read. The Tag Reader is easy to use and is perfectly sized for small hands of the children and toddler. It is a touch and talk reading service that brings stories to life. It is extremely responsive and small enough for children to carry it anywhere. All it takes is just a touch to hear words read aloud or birds sing. It also offers insights into what your children is learning. It makes and excellent educational toys for children ages between four and eight.
How does Tag Reader works as children’s educational toys? As children touches the Tag Reader on the pages of specially printed story books, a small camera at the reader “reads” the pages, which enables children to listen aloud to words and stories read by the reader. This reading aloud are not limited to only text, but to all characters, pictures and learning activities too. It makes an exciting as well as an excellent educational toy for children.
The Tag Reader of the educational toys is a highly complex modern gadgets that is incorporates a 32-bit processor, stereo audio system with multi-channel MIDI hardware, and highly specialised control logic and power management. The proprietary operating system allows this compact device to perform many specialised functions including position detection, game logic processing, event logging and playback.
The Tag Reader also comes with 16MB of flash memory and USB port which allows user to manage up to five books on the reader. It is compatible with common computer operating system. The Tag Reader reads by identifying dotted media, providing response time of less than 50 ms. It utilises optical pattern system and digital processing techniques licensed from Anoto, which allows children to jump within a book, or back and forth between different books.
The Tag Reader is an engaging educational toys for toddler ages four to eight and currently has a library of more than 20 books and games designed for the reader. With this educational toy, children can explore classic books such as Olivia and The Little Engine That Could or characters such as The Little Mermaid. Children can continue to use the Tag Reader as their knowledge grows, choosing to read the whole story read aloud or hear it read line-by-line or by individual words.
LeapFrog has partnered with major publishers such as HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Scholastic and others to produce books for the Tag System to enhance the educational toy. They have also created developer’s kit to enable more third parties to develop books that is suitable for the Tag System, hence ensuring that your children will continue to have enough materials to go with the Tag Reader, thus making it one of the best children’s educational toys available.
The followings are the complete list of books currently available to go with the Tag Reader educational toys:
Kid Classics
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type
Fancy Nancy at the Museum
The Little Engine That Could
Olivia
Walter the Farting Dog Goes on a Cruise
Activity Storybooks
Disney/Pixar’s Cars: Tractor Tipping
Disney Princess: Adventures Under the Sea
Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends: The Golden Paddleball
Go Diego Go!: Underwater Mystery
Kung Fu Panda: Po’s Tasty Training
Pirates! The Treasure of Turtle Island
Scholastic I Spy: Imagine That!
Scholastic Miss Spider’s Tea Party
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Tour de Bikini Bottom
T.Rex’s Mighty Roar
Activity Boards
Tag Funny Phrases
Tag Super Speller
Activity Cards (MSRP: $7.99 each)
National Geographic Kids Birds and Sea Animals
National Geographic Kids Land Animals
Each of these educational books adjust automatically their levelled learning activities in accordance to children’s pace, hence helping children to build confidence and develop love of learning. This is another unique feature of the LeapFrog educational toys.
The Tag Reader has to be connected to computer to download the audio for the Tag Books, and each reader can holds information for five books. While online, parents can also see the children’s progress in recent books and get updates on the skills that the children are exploring via the LeapFrog Learning Path online system. Parents can then gauge how beneficial is the educational toys for their children.
Product Features
The followings are summarised features of the LeapFrog Tag Reader educational toys:
• The amazing touch technology of the Tag Reading System encourages a child's love of reading as words talk, pictures sing and stories live out loud!
• The Tag library includes over 20 books and games featuring characters from TV, movies and classic tales.
• Tag storybooks and learning activities help children build vocabulary and reading skills such as word recognition, reading comprehension and phonics skills.
• Children learn to read through an exciting and interactive experience in which they can also earn online rewards.
• Parents can connect the Tag Reader to the online LeapFrog Learning Path to see what their child is learning, and explore ways to expand their child's learning journey.
The followings are some reviews from consumers who had already bought the ducational toys, extracted from Amazon.com:
Optics from Southern California reviewed:
The Tag reading system is definitely a step up from the Leappad in terms of playability. However, it has its limitations.
- Unlike the Leapster where multiple users can share each device, each Tag is for a single user (player profile). LeapFrog highly recommends each child have his/her own Tag reader in order to take full advantage of Tag. Therefore, sharing doesn't work and means more $$$$ spent.
- Using a Tag reader on multiple computers might be cumbersome. I haven't found a way to "migrate" data easily, for example, in case of OS or PC upgrades. This affects the Rewards and the LEAPFROG Learning Path.
- Can only store 5 audio books at a time on the Reader. So if your child wants a different book besides one of the five, you'll have to connect to the computer to download/manage it. This will make it difficult for long trips. Memory is cheap, why not have more memory to begin with?
- Must connect to the internet, but then, who doesn't have internet access these days.
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Some nice points.
- Has a headphone jack!
- USB connectivity was pretty easy, but did seem a bit slow.
- Reader worked fine.
We use this toy for our almost-five-year-old during our daily commutes. It's wonderful because a) it grabs her attention and delights her during what is usually a very shaky, depressing, hungry time of day, b) it's not like a video game in which you have a catatonic child in your backseat who refuses to talk--it's an interactive learning toy that prompts questions and interesting conversations, and c) it's not obnoxious--no weird beeping, no shooting noises, no electronic "music." It's filled with great music that's real. (The most obnoxious it gets is when she repeatedly clicks on an interesting phrase. Last week we heard "It was spectacular!" five times, before she informed us what she believes "spectacular" means.)
It's not often when our child thinks that a toy is as awesome as her parents do. But I can tell this one is definitely on her short list. It's the only toy that regularly travels from the car to the living room, to the kitchen table, to the bedroom, and then back to the car. That's right. She carries it. She doesn't ask us to carry it around for her. As far as I'm concerned, that's the highest praise you can give.
We bought this product for my 3 1/2 year old son as something to keep him busy on a long drive from NY to NC. He loves Tag and over a two week period I can't think of a single day where he didn't pick it up to play with it. He has three books: Ozzie & Mack, Click Clack Moo (Classic Series) and Cars Tractor Tipping (Activity Series). While he had more fun intially with the Cars & Ozzie and Mack books he has since invested more time into Click Clack Moo and loves it. This is another great product from LeapFrog and I would recommend it to anyone.
My son actually ripped a few pages (because he fell asleep with it one night) and I put some tape over the ripped areas, the pen still reads it just fine.
Great Product!!!!!
The LeapFrog Tag Reading System may be bought from Amazon.com:
If you are considering of buying modern gadgets as educational toys for your children or toddler, the LeapFrog Tag Reader is a definite must in your list.
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